A “diving stick”, or a “dive stick”, is an amusement device used in swimming pools. Such a stick will generally comprise a long thin buoyant body having a weight at one end that is sufficient to cause the body to sink in water and to stand upright, weight side down, on the bottom of a swimming pool.
Dive sticks are thrown into the water of a swimming pool, where they sink to the bottom and stand vertically on-end. During pay with these sticks in various games and exercises, several swimmers competing either individually against each other or as members of competing teams, dive into the pool and retrieve one or more sticks standing at the pool's bottom. Besides being a form of amusement, such games and exercises improve the abilities of the swimmers to hold their breaths, and improve their underwater swimming skills.
In one dive stick game, differing point values are assigned to each stick, and swimmers obtain a score according to the total value of the sticks they have retrieved. In another game, swimmers or teams are assigned individually sticks and obtain a score equal to the number of their sticks they have retrieved in a single dive. Several of the many other dive stick games are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,220,599. In many games, the ability for a diver to readily visually recognize the value or type of stick is critical to success in the game.
Originally, such sticks were rigid. Because certain of these long thin rigid sticks, when standing straight up from the pool bottom, posed an impalement risk to divers, the United States Consumer Products Safety Commission imposed a broad recall and subsequent ban of rigid dive sticks. Since that ban, only dive sticks that are flexible and/or malleable have been sold in the United States. According to the Final Rule of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) as recited in the Federal Register on Mar. 7, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 45 at pages 13645-13652) “ . . . dive sticks and similar articles that maintain a compressive force of less than 5-lbf under the test at Sec. 1500.86(a)(8) are exempt from this banning rule.” Flexible and malleable sticks such as those that are exempted are exemplified in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,332,822 and 6,220,599.
However, such flexible and malleable sticks are still found to have certain disadvantages. Even though passing the 5-lbf compressive force test and posing less of a hazard, those sticks can still pose a certain hazard to a diving swimmer. While being somewhat softer than the original rigid dive sticks, such sticks as disclosed in the '822 and '599 patents are still relatively rigid in comparison to other swimming pool toys. For Instance, the diving sticks shown in FIGS. 1 through 3C and described at Column 3 Line 66 to Column 4 Line 44 of U.S. Pat. No. 6,332,822 employs a body made of polyvinyl chloride or “any material of similar properties of softness and malleability”. While such a softness and malleability may pass the current CPSC regulations, there remains in this inventor's opinion a significant likelihood of injury, or at least pain, should a swimmer impact an upstanding diving stick made of such a material during a dive.
And while the body of the diving stick embodiments shown in FIGS. 4 and 5 and described at Column 4 Line 45 to Column 5 Line 6 of that same '822 patent may be made of a fabric, these bodies are filled with a soft stuffing material such as foam or polyfill or “any materials having properties of softness and pliability corresponding” thereto. While such a softness and pliability may pass the current CPSC regulations, there remains in this inventor's opinion a similarly significant likelihood of injury, or at least pain, should a swimmer impact an upstanding diving stick made of such a material during a dive.
Additionally, although they are somewhat bendable, such sticks as taught in the '822 patent and elsewhere in the prior art must be packaged and stored in a straight shape or else they are prone to becoming permanently bent and disfigured.
And, such sticks are relatively expensive to manufacture.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a diving stick which overcomes the above described drawbacks of the prior art and is safer, less expensive to manufacture, and less susceptible to damage by packaging.
Further, it is an object of the present invention to provide a set of diving sticks that more easily enable recognition between the sticks of the set by allowing using materials that offer greater ornamental flexibility, a wider range of color and decorative combinations, and easy interchangeability between the visible components.
Further, it is an object of the present invention to provide diving sticks whose opposite ends are more similarly shaped and weighted so that the sticks may be grasped at either end and still be properly balanced for throwing while still having the desired imbalance of buoyancy when in the water.
Additional benefits and objects will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon review of the following description of the present invention.